BARRETT-JACKSON TUESDAY- DAY ONE:LOT # 9 1965 CHRYSLER NEWPORT
This is our fictional buyer’s easiest day of the Barrett-Jackson experience.
This is the day that entry-level buyers get their day in the sun.
You can pick up a budget buy on the first day, because it’s the auction equivalent of the used car back lot so we decided to let our hapless buyer pick two cars.
It’s filled with automotive ugly ducklings that ain’t gonna turn into swans at the end of the show but… you get to tell your obnoxious next door neighbor “yeah, I picked this baby up at B-J-man it was rough, everybody seemed to be bidding on this ’61 Valiant. I was up against guys like Jay Leno”.
Our first fictional buyer focused on Lot 9-a green 1965 Chrysler Newport 4 -door sedan with a 383. Nice car, but it carries that “more door” stigma that these family cars get stuck with at every show on the face of the earth.
The copy reads like a brochure for a villa in Switzerland with words like “artful”, “impeccable” and “elegant”-words that are not normally associated with a low end Chrysler 4-door sedan.
Even when it was new.
But our buyer is undaunted-this is exactly like his dad’s car back in the 60s.The same one that he rarely got to drive. That one that left a lifetime mark, so he’s going after this car like grim death after an octogenarian and he gets it.
Sober bid: 7500
Drunk bid: 20,000
Actual bid: 4510
The sober bid makes sense-the car looks good, and it’s kind of unique in its own passive way. So even if that’s lots of coin for a car that won’t grace the front page of any mainstream car magazine it will have fans-the Newport guys are going to love it.
The drunk bid is another issue. That one is going to have our fictional guy telling his wife a bold faced lie “ yeah sweetie, there’s a huge market for these since Brad Pitt was seen driving one in Rio last year. And look at the room-all sorts of space for the kids AND the luggage. I couldn’t afford not to”.
The only reason he bid that high was a rum-fueled burst of uncontrollable nostalgia complemented by his deep inner rage at never getting to drive dad’s car back when he was 16.
He’s going to win this battle with a clever mix of fact and fiction, combined with a price that won’t kill the family budget-it’ll just raise questions.
But he’s on further car adventures probation.
